SHINING SERPENT PASS

CHAPTER 4

-

I

-

The following incident took place shortly before D visited the hospital. Taking advantage of her employer’s departure for a town meeting, the mayor’s maid Nell snuck into the garden. Checking to see that no one else was around, she called out, “Ben!” Her muscular paramour from the cleaners didn’t answer. Knitting her brow dubiously, Nell headed over to the base of the massive peach tree that always served as the site of their trysts.

“Boo!” Ben shouted, suddenly poking his head out from behind the tree.

“Oh, Ben, don’t scare me like that!” Though relief spread through her heart, an odd sense of incongruity started to gnaw at Nell. Ben didn’t quite seem like himself. Sure, his face and his build were the same as ever, but there was something strange about him. Was that an annoying little smirk on his lips?

“What’s wrong, Nell? Do I have something stuck on my face or something?” he asked. He sounded just like Ben, too.

Nell shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Oh, really? Then how about a kiss?”

And with that he took Nell in his arms before she could resist and his lips met hers. For a few seconds the two of them stood fused together like a lone pillar by their firm embrace, but soon the strength fled Ben’s body. Limp as a wet noodle, he quickly collapsed among the roots of the tree.

Sparing not a glance to the lover who’d so suddenly lost consciousness, Nell scanned her surroundings. Her countenance remained as sensuous as ever, but there was something inexplicably strange about her expression.

“When I saw the young buck here slipping into the mayor’s backyard, I had a hunch about what he was up to—and it paid off,” Nell said, adding, “I should give this little lady a piece of my mind for screwing around while she’s on the clock. Of course, it made my job that much easier, so I’ll let it go this time. Lover boy’s gonna be out for a while—I’m gonna have to borrow your body, missy.”

And then, after dragging her boyfriend’s limp form into the cover of the bushes, Nell reclaimed her prim demeanor and returned to the house with a light gait.

On entering the house, Nell quickly locked each and every door. She stood in the middle of the living room with a pensive expression that suggested she was lost in deep thought or grim recollection. But soon she opened her eyes and gave a satisfied nod. “Oh, I see now—there’s still another vamp around. And where they’re covering this up and making like the girl’s not better yet . . . That’d be a D plan, I bet,” she laughed.

While the voice was Nell’s, the manner was unmistakably that of Pluto VIII. But the real question was, what did he hope to accomplish by inhabiting her boyfriend, then leaping from him to her and rifling through her memories?

“Nothing at all out of the ordinary around the house, she thinks. Hold everything—she’s been told not to go into the cellar without asking permission. Bingo! Then I say we go have us a permission-free peek.”

Walking softly so Laura wouldn’t hear her from the bedroom where she remained in hiding, Nell headed for the cellar door with a shameless grin. It wasn’t locked. Pushing the door open, she found a wooden staircase that sank down into the darkness.

Muttering, “Eww, creepy,” with unabashed interest, Nell gathered up the hem of her long skirt and slowly stepped into the dark.

Power lines and hot water pipes coming all the way from the industrial sector ran the length and breadth of the ceiling. From the center of the cellar, with its walls lined with wooden crates and jugs of fuel, Nell surveyed her surroundings with a deeply suspicious gaze.

“Well, nothing out of the ordinary here,” said the maid. “Now, then, what was the focus of Miss Nell’s suspicions . . . ” Her eyes, now charged with an eerie gleam, crept along the walls, floor, and ceiling in rapid succession. Before long, they stopped again at her own feet. Coarsely muttering, “Damn, I just don’t get it,” Nell folded her arms in deliberation. “Any way you slice it, it’s just a plain old cellar.”

Her eyes began to creep all over the place again, but this time they were infused with an even more tenacious glint. “If I were hiding a switch in the cellar, I’d put it somewhere no one could find it, I reckon.”

And, saying that, Nell headed to a corner stacked with empty boxes. “No, I wouldn’t—I’d do the exact opposite. The best place a person can hide is in a crowd. And if you had a switch you didn’t want anyone to notice, you’d put it where anyone could see it.”

Swishing the hem of her skirt, Nell headed over to the control box high on the wall. “As our Miss Nell recalls, she heard strange voices and the creak of gears around here. Meaning . . .” Her sharp eyes stared at a row of nearly a dozen levers. “Maybe it’s this one, the least grimy of the lot . . . ” Grabbing one in the middle of the row, Nell gave it a twist to the right. With a harsh creaking, just as the maid recalled, there was the sound of gears meshing.

“Whoa!”

As Nell cried out, her body swung about in a circle. To be more precise, she was turned completely around when the spot she was standing on pivoted away easily and revealed a circular hole. A wooden ladder stretched down into a darkness far deeper than the gloom of the cellar.

“So, this must be what made our Miss Nell so suspicious. Don’t worry, dear. Uncle Pluto will find the answers for you now,” she chortled.

Eyes glittering wildly, Nell went over to the ladder. Checking that no one else was around, she headed down into the new, lower cellar. The ladder was sturdy enough, but the smoothness of the rungs clearly suggested someone had been making frequent use of it for decades now. Fifty rungs down, she reached the bottom.

“Let’s see. A switch, a switch . . .” Groping in the dark, her hand soon struck a wall. Finding a small switch, she flicked it on.

A feeble light swelled in the darkness. There lay an area so vast it almost seemed as if the whole town would fit inside it. In the very center of that chamber rested a lone box of an unmistakable nature. Though its surface was free of ornamentation, it was clearly a coffin.

Anxiously muttering, “It’s still morning,” to herself, Nell started walking toward the coffin. “Hard to believe the mayor of all people would be keeping a monster in his cellar.”

As she reached for the coffin’s lid without hesitating, someone grabbed Nell by the hair. She started to scream, but, before she could finish, her neck was slashed wide open. Bright blood splashed across the floor.

And, at that very instant, there was a most bizarre incident in another part of town. A short while earlier, a carpenter had discovered a squat man sleeping in the woods. Or at least he’d decided the man was sleeping after checking him for a pulse, but, by the time several other townsfolk and the people from the law enforcement bureau had arrived, his opinion had changed. He now believed it to be a corpse. After all, while the man’s heart was still beating, he wasn’t breathing at all. When it became known the body was that of the outsider who’d accompanied the gorgeous Vampire Hunter, the site was surrounded by a squawking throng.

“Why on earth—?”

“Went and killed himself. Must’ve wanted to get even with us for not making him feel welcome in town.”

“And I keep telling you even though I seen him mixing it up with the locals in my saloon, he just didn’t seem the type to do himself in.”

“Heart’s beating but he ain’t breathing none,” one of the onlookers noted. “What good can come of that, I ask you?”

“Good question,” said someone from the law enforcement bureau. “At any rate, we’ll have to put him out of his misery, right?”

“Right you are,” said one of the townsfolk with a nod. “Good riddance, I say. Finish him off!”

“Will do,” one of the lawmen said. Drawing an enormous automatic handgun from his holster, he pointed it at Pluto VIII’s head. The surrounding mob hustled back out of range. And then, just as the public servant was about to pull the trigger, the man leapt up, fresh as a daisy. With a startled cry, the lawman flinched away.

“You damn idiots! I ain’t on display here!” the squat sleeper bellowed. Looking around contemptuously and seeing how the crowd of townsfolk watched him from a safe distance, he spat, “You people are pathetic. You don’t have the faintest clue what kind of crazy shit your trusty leader keeps for a pet, but you’ll stand around and watch someone who collapsed in the street get their brains blown out.”

Needless to say, the foul-tempered man was Pluto VIII, having returned to his own body the instant his host Nell was slain.

-

Shortly after D watched Lori write the mayor’s name, the Hunter left the hospital. Dr. Tsurugi requested that he stay and talk with the girl a while longer, but D replied that business came first. Stepping out the door, D was surrounded by three figures. Sheriff Hutton and two deputies—the very same people he’d gone to see at the law enforcement bureau earlier. All of them were wearing gun belts.

“Figured you’d be here, creep,” the sheriff snarled, rocket launcher in one hand. The other two held shotguns at the ready.

Seeing their weapons leveled at his heart, D asked, “You have some business with me?” His tone was languid. He was standing in full sunlight. For a creature like a dhampir, descending in part from the Nobility, the conditions couldn’t be worse for doing battle.

“You wanna know if we got business? What did you think, we came here to take you out for a drink?” said one of the deputies. “For a freakin’ outsider, you got some nerve. I don’t care if you’re a dhampir or whatever the hell you are—you’re out of line. We’re gonna give you a nice, long lesson in what happens when you threaten the sheriff in this town.”

“I’ve got a full day tomorrow before my time’s up. Can’t this wait until then?”

“Are you nuts?! We let a little bastard like you take care of our trouble here, and me and my boys won’t look like we’re worth our pay no more.” Gouts of flame seemed to shoot from Sheriff Hutton’s eyes. His rocket launcher was set to discharge all its chambers in a single shot. He had only to push the button, and seven pencil missiles would blast the beautiful Hunter into unrecognizable scraps.

Seeing that a fight was unavoidable, D asked softly, “Are we going to do this here?”

“Now, that’s what I like to hear. I’m impressed you ain’t trying to make a run for it. Of course, we’re still gonna make you pay for coming off so damn tough,” the older of the two deputies muttered, swinging the end of his shotgun to indicate an alley that was dark even by daylight.

Meeting the flames of hatred focused on him like a blowtorch with his ever-frosty demeanor, D asked, “Ready to make your move?”

“You first.”

Each standing ten feet away, the two deputies braced their shotguns. They’d taken up positions they calculated to be well beyond the reach of D’s longsword. No matter what move he might try to make, their shotguns should prove faster than his sword. Their guns already had the first shell in the chamber. The tension was rising by the second.

A lone invader ivy bush grew from the ground by D’s feet. Because it had an amazing knack for propagation, exterminating this weed was of the utmost importance, but efforts toward that end never went well. Every time someone thought they had it beat, it would put forth a new shoot within three days, if even part of its fine root structure remained, and it took less than three weeks for it to reach maturity. Though it had no blossoms, it displayed the greatest determination to live and had spread everywhere from the colder regions to the greener belts. D’s right hand reached for one of its branches. It was a graceful movement that kept the tense lawmen from putting any more pressure on their trigger fingers. Effortlessly snapping the plant off at its root, D waved it at the men like a great green wad of cotton candy. “Come on.”

“You got it!” they shouted, squeezing the triggers with the brute strength their delight lent them. With the gravest of roars, each weapon released three dozen pellets—seventy-two balls of shot loosed in a sheath of flame at D’s chest. One can’t help but wonder if the two men saw the flash of green that seemed to sweep the hot lead away a split second before it was due to strike. Tiny lead balls plunked down on the crushed stone road, and the two deputies felt the chill of the blade sinking into their skulls. Surely neither of them would’ve believed he could use the invader ivy leaves and branches to knock the flying buckshot out of the air.

Still brandishing his bloodstained sword, D said to the rocket-launcher-packing giant, “Come on.”

The giant trembled. The murderous implement under his arm had become a mere chunk of iron that offered no security at all. What guarantee did he have that a man who could knock buckshot out of the air with a branch couldn’t turn his own missiles back on him? Imagining himself caught in a burning white flash that would reduce him to bloody chunks sailing through the air, the sheriff grew pale.

“How about it?” the Hunter said. “You’ve already got your weapon out.”

Hutton had no choice but to go through with it. But no matter what weapon he had, he didn’t think it would save him from the Hunter’s sword. The sheriff felt the Grim Reaper brushing the nape of his neck.

At that moment, Dr. Tsurugi came running into the alley in great haste. Instantly realizing what was going on, he stepped between the two of them and turned to D. “Please, just stop,” the physician said. “There’s been entirely too much killing already. If you kill the sheriff, then you really will have to leave here. Even the mayor couldn’t do anything about it.”

D’s hand went into action, easily shoving the physician aside. The fight had already begun, and D’s sword had been drawn. It wouldn’t be going back in its sheath until it’d tasted the blood of all who made themselves his foe.

The sheriff’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed loudly. For the first time, it dawned on him just who he’d chosen to go up against.

The stir of excited voices suddenly hung in the air over town. “Sheriff! Sheriff!” a voice cried, and there was the sound of approaching footsteps.

“You’re a lucky man.” Giving a light wave of his right hand that threw every last drop of gore from his blade to the ground, D walked right by the frozen sheriff’s side. He simply left, as if saying he was finished with the lawman. And in the Hunter’s place, a deputy came running into the alley. Seeing the carnage, he froze in his tracks.

“Wha—what do you want?!” the sheriff stammered.

No sooner had he asked the question than the ground shook terribly. No earthquake could even begin to compare to this. It felt like the earth itself had shifted nearly ninety degrees. Panic swept over the people. The crying of children echoed from more than one home.

“What on earth’s going on?” This time it was the physician who shouted the question.

“It’s Magnetic Storm Pass.”

“That’s impossible. We’re not supposed to be headed south-southwest!”

“Yeah? Well, we are!”

Frightened screams and angry shouts bounced across the shifting earth as it continued to rock wildly. Ahead of the moving town, the entrance to a narrow pass formed by the slopes of a pair of mountains was visible, and a purple cloud could be seen masking that entrance. That magnetic field would wreak havoc with anything electronic, and the town was headed straight for it.

So, what exactly was the Magnetic Storm Pass? Simply put, it was another slice of insanity spawned by a dispute between Nobles. At the end of an interminable battle over the borders of their domain, one Noble faction had set various offensive and defensive devices along the perimeter of what they held was their land. They built a spatial distortion that could pack infinity into a finite area and swallow any invaders. They made visible light into a weapon that could slice through the solid steel hull of a flying battleship. They constructed illusion projectors that not only made people see things, but could even convince them they were part of an entirely different ecosystem. And finally, they created a magnetic storm with the power to disrupt the electrical systems of any machine. Though the Nobility that created these defenses were dying out, the weapons, fed by nuclear power sources, continued to terrorize humanity. And it was one such deadly device that had its lair in the very pass the town was now rushing toward.

“That’s odd . . . the warnings aren’t sounding.”

“Warnings be damned. There’s no way in hell our route should be taking us through there!” a voice bellowed angrily out on streets where darkness and light intermingled seductively.

Purple bolts of lightning zipped down the lightning rods. The string of small explosions that could be heard were most likely from circuit breakers that could no longer bear the load. Now, blackness claimed the heavens and earth, and tendrils of light like colossal serpents surrounded the entire town. Factory shutters rattled down noisily, and the radiating fins spread wide on the electrical discharge towers. Energy absorption rods began extending from the ship’s sides.

“What’s wrong with the navigational computers?” shouted someone in the underground control room.

“There’s nothing wrong with the computers,” another voice replied shrilly.

“But we’re way off course!”

“Someone put in bad data, I tell you!”

“Damn it! Who in blazes could’ve done that?!”

-

Grains of sand and small pebbles struck D and Dr. Tsurugi’s cheeks.

“This doesn’t look good. Doctor, you’d better hurry home.”

“Come to mention it, so should you,” the young physician replied.

“It’s a long way back to my quarters.”

“I’ll walk you there.”

D looked at the physician’s face. And then he casually started to walk away. Dr. Tsurugi followed right behind him.

Lightning raced across the earth. Thin, wriggling threads of it. Spraying sand, flinging stones, the lightning wrapped around a gatepost and gave off a shower of sparks. The dazzling display of light made D look like white-hot metal. Along the town’s sides, the energy absorption rods were also catching the lightning. It would be sent to the nuclear reactors via transformers. Tasting untold bounty for the first time in ages, the reactors showed their satisfaction with their rising, pale blue flames.

D continued silently down the street. Serpents of light raced all around him, raising their heads menacingly at the hem of his coat and spitting fire.

“I’m going back,” the physician said from behind him. “Not because I’m getting scared or anything. Oh, I’m scared, all right. But I realized at present we really can’t afford to have me getting hurt.”

D nodded.

Bowing and excusing himself, the physician did an about-face. Just above him, there was a flash of silvery light. A bolt of lightning that was about to strike his head was split in half, and the fragments twitched on the ground. Completely oblivious to what had happened, Dr. Tsurugi raced off.

Again the town shook. A phosphorescent flash engulfed an electrical discharge tower, and flames shot from its base. Flashes of electricity zipped from the ground in the industrial sector. The energy absorption circuits had surpassed their capacity. Absorption and discharge—both methods had reached their limits.

D had noticed that the town’s course had changed. There was no way a navigation system governed by a number of computers working in concert would plot a course that took them right through the middle of a magnetic storm. Some outside agent had adjusted it. But why? Where on earth were they taking the town? Those were questions best put to the mayor.

D stopped in his tracks. A man staggered from the path that ran beside a house. He was clutching at his throat. This was no victim of electrocution. D’s eyes glittered at the sight of his oddly pale skin. Turning around, D went to cross the street. The man collapsed on the spot.

An especially massive electricity snake wriggled down the street. D sprinted. The shining serpent sank into the man’s midsection. Black smoke rose from him, and the stench of burning flesh pervaded the area. His charred corpse rolled into the street.

Lightning coursed at D from all sides, only to be sundered by silvery flashes.

As D was about to take a step forward, the smoking black mass suddenly moved. Bracing himself with his arms, he slowly raised his torso. Needless to say, his hair and clothes were singed, and his face was burnt to a crisp. Bits of sizzled cloth and hair rained down on the road. The man was getting up.

There weren’t many creatures that could be jolted with fifty thousand volts and not be the worse for wear. The Nobility was one of them. It seemed this man was infected with the disease.

A red cavity opened in the lower half of the blackened face. His mouth. That alone was as red as ever, as if to offer some contrast to his pearly white fangs. How does a person charred to a crisp get to their feet? Burnt body framed with white light, he slowly began walking toward D. Smoke wafted from his limbs. Probing bolts of lightning crackled from his singed flesh.

D didn’t move a muscle. A blackened hand reached for him. A second before it closed on the Hunter’s throat, the hand swept away in an elegant arc and then fell back to earth. D seemed to listen for the thunk of it hitting the ground.

The charred human form began to lose its thickness, turning into a pile of dust. In the blink of an eye, the gusting winds had scattered the remains far and wide. This was the second case of the vampire infection. However, simply just because a person had turned into a vampire didn’t necessarily mean they would crumble like ash when true death claimed them. The degree of corruption their body manifested depended entirely on how long it’d been since they’d been made a servant of the Nobility. A person who’d spent three days in their service would leave a rotting corpse. Given two weeks, the flesh would melt from their bones. If more than a year had passed, then they might be reduced to dust. In death alone they would be bound by the same rules as the living. What’d just occurred to the corpse of this vampirized individual simply wasn’t possible. Or was this a case where his transformation into one of the Nobility had long been concealed? No, that wasn’t possible, either. This was an entirely new disease. Perhaps it should’ve been called Nobilitation Syndrome.

D turned his back on the remains and started to walk away. But the question remained: where was he headed?

-

II

-

The town’s ability to insulate itself from the storm had reached its limits. Breakers in four of the five electrical discharge towers had burnt out from the overload, and the remaining tower was down to fifty percent effectiveness.

“Nuclear reactor number one—energy level at fifty-two percent over normal capacity.”

“Number two is fifty-seven percent over. She’s got all she can handle.”

“Number three is sixty-nine percent over—well into the danger zone. Danger! Danger! Danger!”

“Navigational control room, how many minutes more until we’re clear of the magnetic storm?” Mayor Ming asked.

“We can’t be certain. According to our data, this magnetic belt is approximately 2.95 miles wide. At our present speed, that’d be 5 minutes, 19.6 seconds.”

“Report what degree of danger the town would face in that five minutes if we were to shut down energy absorption for one, two, or all three of our reactor towers.”

“If all three towers are shut down—town will be destroyed in 2 minutes and 22 seconds. Two towers—town will be destroyed in 3 minutes and 5.4 seconds. One tower—town will be destroyed in 5 minutes and 21.3 seconds.”

“Keep only the number one reactor in operation. Increase cruising speed to twenty-five miles per hour.”

“That’s insane. The outer shell will suddenly be taking three times as much voltage—it’ll blow the reactor!”

“I realize it’s crazy,” the mayor said. “But we can’t do a damn thing unless we get clear of this storm!”

“Roger that.”

The instant the other two nuclear reactors stopped absorbing power, the remaining energy turned at once on the number one reactor, snapping at it like the fangs of a crazed beast. Fire shot from the energy flow control system and five of the safeties, and the now unbalanced flames of nuclear fusion quickly drove the needle toward the danger zone. In no time at all, pale blue flames had burst through the bottom plates of the town and were shooting wildly into the air.

-

Wracked by the powerful shocks, Lori gave a silent scream and clung desperately to her bed. Dr. Tsurugi ran to her. Shouting Lori’s name, he threw himself at her and pulled her tight to him. Lori clung to his warm chest. The physician’s heart kept pounding wildly. He’s just as scared as I am, Lori thought. For the first time, she found herself feeling something other than curiosity toward the young doctor.

-

Ahead of the town, there wriggled a particularly large and fierce serpent of light. Lightning crackled from every inch of it, and when bolts from it brushed the craggy cliffs to either side of it, the surface was fused into glass or rained down on the town. Chunks of rock crashed through the roof of a house somewhere, and a woman could be heard screaming. A compressor in one of the factories took a hit as well, turning the braided steel air hose into a high-voltage cable that whipped into workers’ bodies and scalded their faces. White light engulfed the town. Silicon polymer roofs were being blown off houses, and whole trees were being sucked up into the sky, roots and all. People scrambled into their basements for protection.

The fierce suction assailed D as well. His traveler’s hat and the hem of his coat began to rise. Securing the hat’s wide brim with his left hand, D drew his sword with his right. Turning the blade over, he drove it into the earth. Kneeling, he waited. Pebbles flew up, and roofing materials followed right after them.

-

The true mayhem was concentrated in the reactor and navigation control centers. A serpent of light that slipped in through a fresh hole in the wall thrashed ruthlessly through the bulkhead, flinging workers everywhere. The pungent odor of burnt flesh filled the air. Snagging a flying worker with one hand, the mayor slammed him back against the floor. The old man’s strength was incredible. Raising his voice, he asked, “Can’t correct our computers, am I right?”

“No, it’s no use!”

“Then switch to manual controls!” Mayor Ming snapped back.

“Manual controls on these were scrapped over five hundred years ago.”

The mayor’s face took on the fierceness of a demon. Pulling the serpent of light that was devastating his surroundings to his chest, the mayor tore it apart with his bare hands. Black smoke rose from his hands and his torso. His hair stood on end, and lightning leapt around in his mouth. “Where the hell are we going?” he said. “Who’s doing this, and where do they think they’re taking my town?”

-

D heard the riot of life and death all around him. Kneeling, gripping the sword he’d driven into the earth, he looked like an obsidian statue. With all the elements howling furiously around him, he alone remained unaffected. Light filled the air above him. A serpentine form twice as thick as any man could get his arms around was dropping toward D, scorching the air molecules as it went. Here was the leader of this deadly swarm. Never breaking his pose, D flew backward. Passing him in midair, the serpent fell to the ground and broke in half before taking to the air once again.

-

The magnetic belt is pulling away from the town.”

“Pull out of it at full speed.”

As if in response to that joyful cry, blue-black space stretched across the forward view screen—a sky sealed in tranquil darkness, without a hint of blinding light. As if beaten off by the winds gusting against them, the lights coloring the town began to fall off behind them.

“We’re clear!” someone shouted. Cheers suddenly filled the air.

-

When Sheriff Hutton called on Ming, some three hours had passed since the mayor had left one of the workers in charge of overseeing the removal of the radioactive waste. The sheriff found Ming settled into a chair in his private chambers. “How are the townsfolk?” the mayor asked in ill humor, his eyes shut.

“They’re finally settling down. We’re looking into the number of injured now,” the sheriff said in a tone that sounded somewhat intrigued.

“Then, I gather there were no fatalities?”

“Yeah. Surprisingly few wounded, too. Hard to believe no one got electrocuted. Radiation poisoning’s been pretty minor, to boot.”

“We have that medicine I came up with forty years ago to thank for that. Anyway, what do you want?” The mayor opened his eyes. Somewhat reproachfully, he added, “You ought to still be out there.”

“Actually, I’ve come to gab about old times with you,” the sheriff said, smiling at him. The mayor had never seen him smirk like that. “You happen to remember Ende Remparts? He was a twelve-year-old kid.”

The expression that formed on the mayor’s face was that of an entirely different person. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Poor kid had a muscular disease they could’ve treated well enough in a town on the ground, but you hated the idea of anyone getting off. Told him the condition was untreatable, and he ended up offing himself as a result, didn’t he?”

“Hey!”

“How about that time with Ebenezer Villzuya?” the sheriff continued, stroking the barrel of his rocket launcher. “That one I had a hand in. We were in the middle of a famine, and he stole a half-pound more synthetic butter than he was supposed to get. His kids were on the brink of starving. The rest of the town pretended not to notice. After all, no one else was half as bad off as his family. Why, even you were pretty easy on him at first. But in the end, you just couldn’t find it in you to let the first man to break the rules in the town you made get away with it. So, this cuss here, who was just a deputy at the time, went in and gunned down his whole family, then made it look like suicide.”

The mayor got up out of his chair and barked, “Who the hell are you?!”

“It’s me. Take a good look now. I’m the one and only Sheriff Hutton. Given name: Bailey Hutton; height: nine feet nine inches; weight: five hundred thirty-five pounds; place of birth: three hundred thirty-fourth sector of the Eastern Frontier. I first came on board . . . ”

A loud crack resounded at his jaw. The massive frame of five hundred and thirty-five pounds lurched backward and rolled on the floor. Dashing over, the mayor was just about to stomp his right foot down on the giant’s throat when the barrel of the rocket launcher rose from the floor to stop him.

“Hey, now—cut that out. I don’t care how tough you are. Seven blasts from this will send you straight to the hereafter,” the sheriff said, rubbing his jaw as he got back up. He was like a walking mountain. If someone had opened the door just then, they wouldn’t have seen anything besides his back. On the other hand, the mayor stood only five foot eight and weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds. Though nutritional supplements might’ve helped to explain how he’d lived to be over two hundred, the punch he’d just delivered was beyond anything imaginable. “Ow, that smarts. You pack more of a wallop than I’d heard,” the sheriff said as he nursed his jaw, but his voice was clearly that of another person.

“Oh, it’s you? Got one hell of a strange power there,” the mayor said, not seeming particularly upset as he went back to his chair. He must’ve figured that as long as he knew what and whom he was dealing with, he could do away with them whenever he pleased. “I thought you were a bit of a shady character from the moment I heard you were D’s partner—and then you go off possessing our sheriff and stealing his memories. Well, what exactly do you intend to do next?”

“Nothing serious, really. Compared to what a heavyweight scoundrel like you gets away with, what I’m asking for is small potatoes.”

“I see. And that would be?”

“I want what the Knights left you.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been over every inch of that house, and I couldn’t find a thing. From what they told me, it seems you wanted it, too. In which case, it’s pretty obvious where it’d have to be now.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know its location either.” Sitting there in his chair, the mayor spread his hands in a display of innocence. “When I found out you tried to save them, I very much wanted to ask you exactly the same thing.”

“I see. So, you were the one behind that whole little act about bringing me in for stealing some flowers?” the sheriff said in Pluto VIII’s voice, grinning at him as the biker would. “Too bad about that. But, you see, I’ve got no proof what you’re telling me is true. Worse yet, your town’s got these vampires running around and no one knows when the hell they got on. Got on . . . ” he snorted. “That’s a laugh. Of course no one would know when. They’ve been here since the very beginning, after all.”

The voice suddenly became that of the sheriff. “Six months back, on your orders, I snatched Dumper Griswell and Yan Will. Didn’t have the foggiest notion what you intended to use them for, but no one in town was gonna miss a couple of worthless drunks. But with things as they are now, I kinda have to wonder—did them two maybe get themselves turned into vampires?”

“And just what would you do if they did?” the mayor said menacingly.

“Hey, now! I thought I told you not to move. Besides, trying to do anything to me won’t accomplish anything. Your sheriff here’s the one who’ll take the lumps, while I’ll just go back to my old body and slip into someone else. Hell, I could even use your own daughter . . . ”

“And could you move into another body from the one you’re in now?” the mayor asked.

“Yep.”

“Hmm. Then maybe you ought to try possessing me. That way you’ll know straight away whether I’m telling the truth or not.”

“Wow, knock me over with a feather. Are you sure about this? I’ll be privy to your every little secret.”

“I don’t mind a bit. After all, this way, you’ll see it’d be in your interest to join forces with me for a little while.”

“Join forces?”

“That’s right. We’re both after the same thing, but there are any number of ways it might be used.”

“Ah, I see. So, as long as your use and mine don’t conflict, we’d be fine. Good enough.”

“What’ll you do about the sheriff?”

“I’ll screw with his brain a bit and leave him snoozing. Make sure no one comes in here for a while.”

The mayor spoke into his intercom, saying something to the effect that no one was to be let into his chambers. He turned to face the sheriff. One of the giant’s hands latched onto his deeply wrinkled wrist. Two seconds passed . . . then three . . . And then, with a crash that shook the whole room, five hundred and thirty-five pounds of lawman fell over like a tree. An expression of amazement that wasn’t his at all quickly formed on the mayor’s face as he sat there with his eyes shut.

“I . . . I can’t believe that.” The voice that slipped from his dry lips was choked with fear. Almost as if his own thoughts terrified him . . . “Who could do such an awful thing . . . And you still call yourself—or should I say myself—human?!”

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